David Holte was my best friend on Van Dyke Road. This was all before we started questioning things. Like why there was a big mound of dirt next to his house. Why was it fun to move that dirt around? I never asked him where his parents were, or what they did. Neither of us wondered if boys and girls could actually be friends.

Once school started, everything began to change. It only took one ride of teasing before we stopped sitting together. I don’t know if he missed me. Again, we didn’t ask things like that. He sat with the boys and showed them how he could touch his nose with his own tongue, a trick once reserved just for me. And I sat with girls in dresses and patent leather shoes, homework tucked neatly on my lap.

I don’t know if he moved away before I stopped missing him, or just the opposite. But somewhere around the fifth grade, a new David moved into the neighborhood. Barbie had become my best friend. We shared everything. Sleepovers and pajamas. Secrets and homework. She lived in Victoria Heights. We spoke on the phone for hours each night. The cord wrapped around our heads, going over the day’s events in the team room of Washington Elementary.

I assumed it was one of her sisters on the phone, the first time I called and got a busy signal. When it began to happen more frequently, I asked her about it. She said it was David Wyatt — the new David on Van Dyke Road. The innocence of my “Holte” period had long passed. We were questioning things. About friendships and boys and girls. And in the sound of that busy signal, I could feel everything changing.

It had been several days since we talked (which is a lifetime in fifth grade). So when the phone rang about 5:30pm, I raced through the kitchen to grab it from the wall. It was her. I took off into conversation. About Wendy and Lori and Kyle and Chris… and this week’s spelling trip. But she stopped me abruptly. She wasn’t at home. She was calling from the neighbor’s house. Why? She began to explain that she had been on the phone with David. My heart already began to sink. He must have forgotten to hang up the phone, she said, because they were still connected. The lines tied. She wanted me to walk to his house and tell him to hang up the phone. This is why she called. Of course I was devastated. Of course I did it anyway. Dragging my feet in the gravel. It was his sister Taffy who opened the door. I explained the situation. She found David and smacked him on the back of the head before putting the receiver back in its proper place on the wall.

So everything was in place. And I felt completely lost.

I don’t know when the Wyatts left Van Dyke Road. Probably not long before we did. I mention it only because never have we been more dependent on our cell phones. Lost without them. When really, it’s always been about our connections, not the objects that connect us.

Surrounded by doubt and questions, the world will forever keep changing. But one thing remains constant, sure, our need to be seen, to be heard, to be surrounded by those who say, for you, I’m not too busy.